Google Rewriting PDF Titles
-
Has anyone else noticed Google rewriting the title of PDF documents?
-
Sure Wayne.
While there are differences between a web page and a PDF, from the concept of how Google handle's the data there is little difference. A crawler reads text and processes the data, which is then ranked and appears in search results. The same basic rules apply.
Here is an example:
-
Go to the following URL: http://centerforhealthysex.com/wp-content/uploads/. You can see this site allows the contents of this folder to be displayed (not a recommended practice).
-
Notice the first pdf file in the list: "alexandra-katehakis-biography.pdf"
-
Go to Google.com and search for the following without quotes: ".pdf site:centerforhealthysex.com". Notice the title shows as "download bio pdf - Center for Healthy Sex".
-
Return to Google.com and search for "alexandra katehakis biography". You will see the same file now has a title of "Alexandra Katehakis is a licensed Marriage, Family Therapist ..." In this case, Google grabbed the first line of text and used it as the title.
You can repeat this type of testing with almost any pdf or web page.
-
-
Yes, I've seen it with web pages but this is my first experience with PDF's. Anyone else seeing this?
-
Google reserves the right to change titles to represent what they feel is most appropriate for the user. A pdf document online is similar to a web page in that regard.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Issue Duplicate Page Title
I'm having some really strange issues with duplicate page titles and I can't seem to figure out what's going on. I just got a new crawl from SEOMOZ and it's showing some duplicate page titles. http://www.example.com/blog/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/2/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/3/ Repeat .............. I have no idea what's going on, how these were duplicated, or how to correct it. Does anyone have a chance to take a look and see if you can figure out what's happening and what I need to do to correct the errors? I'm using Wordpress and all in one SEO plugin. Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0 -
What else: struggling with google position
Hi. I understand everyone is offering their time for free here so any advice or support is much appreciated. http://www.cytronex.com
Technical SEO | | AdamJamesCytronex
PA 44 || mR 4.6 || mT 5.73 || 986 links from 43 Root Domains
DA 33 || 3,942 links from 71 Domains We've dropped from position 25ish to position 70ish in keyword searches for 'electric bikes'. I've tried everything and I just don't understand! It's genuine content, the actual product is increasingly popular, we have several links from sites which are (well, to my mind) reasonable quality. I've only just been brought in to look at this and my lack of any SEO or web experience is not putting my boss off expecting an instant solution 😞 As I'm only just getting to grips with it, Analytics was only installed about a month ago so I can't pin point a moment when it dropped. We're consistently out-positioned by sites with lower PA/DA scores. Any insight anyone might have would be amazing! Thanks
Adam0 -
Htaccess rewrites
We’re using wordpress, and we have the following in the .htaccess: BEGIN WordPress RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] END WordPress We have a URL like http://subdomain.example.com/select-a-card/?q=fuel, and I want to rewrite it so that it becomes http://subdomain.example.com/fuel-card/ What do I need to add to the htaccess to do this?? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Google + button
Hi everyone, just noticed the default new red button go onto my website. Is there anyway to go back to the blue button or customise it? it doesn't really fit in with our colour sceheme 😞 Thanks, any info much appreciated as always.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
My site has vanished from google
Hi my site has vanished from google. We have been for a very long time. for example if you put in gastric band hypnotherapy then we would be first page number two and also lots of other keywords but now we have vanished from google and i do not know why or how to solve this. can anyone please help me and help me understand what i need to do to solve this please My site is http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk I am not sure if i have been banned or why i have dropped out of google
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google Shopping Australia/Google Merchant Centre
So Google Shopping has finally landed in Australia so we've got some work todo hooking it up to our client ecom sites. Right now we have a handful of clients who are setup, the feed is getting in their ok but all products are sitting in "disapproved" status in the dashboard and clicking into each individual product the status says awaiting review. I logged a support ticket with Google to get some more info on this as it doesn't look right to me (ie the disapproved status in dashboard) and got a useless templated answer. Seems that if I switch the country destination to US the products are approved and live in google.com shopping search within the hour. Switch back to Australia and they go back to disapproved status. Anyone having the same issue/seen this before? I simply don't trust Google support and wondering if there's other factors at play here.
Technical SEO | | Brendo0 -
Google indexing page with description
Hello, We rank fairly high for a lot of terms but Google is not indexing our descriptions properly. An example is with "arnold schwarzenegger net worth". http://www.google.ca/search?q=arnold+schwarzenegger+net+worth&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a When we add content, we throw up a placeholder page first. The content gets added with no body content and the page only contains the net worth amount of the celebrity. We then go back through and re-add the descriptions and profile bio shortly after. Will that affect how the pages are getting indexed and is there a way we can get Google to go back to the page and try to index the description so it doesn't just appear as a straight link? Thanks, Alex
Technical SEO | | Anti-Alex0